Video: Patagonia – A Journey By Bike by Sam Oakes

October 29th, 2015

Patagonia, the land shared by Argentina and Chile, has been beautifully captured by Sam Oakes. These blessed lands comprising of mind-blowing mountains, deserts, steppes, grasslands and coastlines were named after the word patagón, the term used by Magellan in 1520 to describe the native people that his expedition thought to be giants.

If these images don’t make you want to go to Patagonia, I don’t know what will!

Alee LOVES bikes and travel. So much so he once sold everything he owned to ride through 30 countries to learn a bit about himself and the world. Check out his book Bicycle Touring in One Hour to do the same: http://cyclingabout.com/bicycle-touring-book/

The video is actually mostly the more famous southern Patagonia. That is Torres Del Paine National Park and a bit further north than that of Mount Fitz Roy. No question those are very beautiful but they are also way more touristy and crowded than depicted here. The mountains with the dark tops in the national park have trails that have so many people that hiking is like being in a single file train of people. There are plenty of other national park worthy mountains and lakes not shown where hardly anyone goes. There are a couple of shots quite a bit further north I believe of Volcan Calbuco looking west to the city of Peurto Montt. There is about a thousand kilometers of Patagonia in between Torres Del Paine and the northern volcanos not shown or at least not shown much. Patagonia tends to be either almost as desolate as depicted in this movie or very touristy and crowded in tourist hot spots like the two mentioned above and a handful of others like El Calafate, Pucon and Bariloche. The impression you get from watching this movie is that there are no locals or tourists which is a distortion. Most of the footage is in treeless areas which makes me think they only did the southern part in Argentina on the east side of the mountains.